Best charger

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Susan~S

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From Baditudes Blog (he's one of our resident battery/safety experts):
  • Battery Chargers. Get the best charger that you can reasonably afford. Statistically most battery incidents occur while charging. Pila, xtar, and Nitecore Intellicharger are the most recommended brands.
Regarding batteries, I highly recommend you spend some time with @Baditude & @Mooch (two of our resident battery/safety experts) and visit their blogs.

Here are links to some of Mooch's blogs:
And here are a couple of @Baditude blogs:
BATTERIES - WHERE TO BUY

Only buy batteries from a reputable supplier (not ebay or Amazon) as there are many counterfeit batteries being sold. Here are several reputable battery suppliers in the US.

* RTD Vapor
* Illumination Supply
* Lighthound
* Orbtronics
 

TheRedlines

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I have been extremely happy with my LUC V4 for about a year and a half. It has an option to charge at .5 amp / 1 amp / 2amps. and it is put out by Efest as well. I upgraded to this from two intellicharger brand chargers. There doesn't seem to be any real smarts to any of the chargers available. They simply feed electricity back into the batteries at a specific rate and should stop at 4.2v
 

Ou2mame

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The charger won't matter with low quality batteries. I like my nitecore d2 charger, but you should seriously consider better batteries. Efest batteries are rewraps, you don't know what's inside, they just buy the cheapest batteries they can find and slap their name on it. Stick to samsung, LG, and a Sony, and buy from trusted sources because there's a lot of fakes out there.
 
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Ou2mame

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I have been extremely happy with my LUC V4. It has an option to charge at .5 amp / 1 amp / 2amps. and it is put out by Efest as well. I upgraded to this from two intellicharger brand chargers. There doesn't seem to be any real smarts to any of the chargers available. They simply feed electricity back into the batteries at a specific rate and should stop at 4.2v
That's not true at all. The better the charger, the longer the battery will last. There's higher tolerances with higher quality chargers. There's over charge protection, that works. Another good thing about a good charger is flame ......ant housing so that if the battery does catch fire, it doesn't burn your house down. Most battery accidents happen during charging. It's the most dangerous aspect of batteries.
 

TheRedlines

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That's not true at all. The better the charger, the longer the battery will last. There's higher tolerances with higher quality chargers. There's over charge protection, that works. Another good thing about a good charger is flame ......ant housing so that if the battery does catch fire, it doesn't burn your house down. Most battery accidents happen during charging. It's the most dangerous aspect of batteries.
I'm certainly not say any cheap piece of crap is as good as the leading chargers. I'm saying between the top four brands there really isn't much of a difference. There haven't been anything in improvements to this technology in the last few years. The pila design (top of the line) is how many years old now? (At least since 2008. That's 7 years) It is overpriced for what it is but unfortunately isn't something the chinese have been good at outpacing yet.
 

Ou2mame

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Oh yeah in any given price point the chargers are all pretty much the same. I thought you meant any charger is as good as any charger lol.. And that's really not the case. I would hate to see someone burn their house down with a cheap ebay charger that was included with their efest battery.
 
Oh yeah in any given price point the chargers are all pretty much the same. I thought you meant any charger is as good as any charger lol.. And that's really not the case. I would hate to see someone burn their house down with a cheap ebay charger that was included with their efest battery.
I'd like to see a digital 4 bay smart charger with .5/1/2 amp options and a dedicated circuit for each bay. It isn't something so special but for some reason isn't something the Charger manufacturers have felt the need to produce. Heck we have smart phones available for cheaper than the Pila. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in my first post.
 
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